Offering more purpose for business
- Enjoying the breaks immersed in nature
Offering more purpose to business Last September the oldest town in The Netherlands, Nijmegen, was centre stage to EBBF’s annual conference. The question we asked was “what is the purpose of business”? Over 25 presenters reflected the varied composition of the audience and offered their answers to this question, and as an EBBF member you can also download the presentations in the members-only area of the website. An typical panel confronted s where a 80 year old chairman of a multinational Godric Bader, together with Kian Greis a 25 year old entrepreneur elected one of the top young entrepreneurs in Germany, with Judi Neal founder of one of the most prestigious international awards promoting excellence and spirituality in business, and Christian Kornevall project director at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Cornelia Raportaru a director at student’s organization AIESEC, were moderated by George Starcher a former senior partner at McKinsey and co-founder of EBBF. What did they have in common? That in their own firms and organizations they not only promote but most importantly practice a sustainable, holistic and firmly values-based style of management and decision making. As a consequence they become recognised ethical leaders and creators of success in their organisations, in short: inspiring leaders.
A few highlights of the conference included Ben Wolters, director of the DePoort conference centre welcoming the audience with Depoort’s own highly spiritual and motivating purpose of business. Jan Willem Kirpestein on the deeper personal motivations that give purpose to business.
Larry Miller offered his take on the five new forms of capital that create the higher performance organization:
- Social Capital: The Level of internal and external trust,
- Spiritual Capital: The degree to which individuals are centered by higher purpose,
- Human Capital: The sum of human competence and motivation,
- Technology or Process Capital
- and of course Financial Capital.
And his nine currencies to create wealth:
1. Broad-Slicing: Creating Unity of Energy and
2. Trust: You Can Count on Me
3. Purpose: A Pursuit With Passion
4. Dialogue: Thinking Together Rather than Alone
5. Discipline: Dance to the DrumbeatDance to the Drumbeat
6. Team Work: A Return to the Family Farm
7. Appreciation: When You Make Performance Matter
8. Scorekeeping: When Performance Becomes A Game
9. Flow: When Process Becomes Habit
Beppe Robiati (CEO of SCAC Italy) gave a passionate vision of Spirituality equating it to the formula love + action.
An evening marathon by Augusto Lopez Claros (Chief Economist of the World Economic Forum) had the audience glued until almost midnight with a highly interactive session sharing his insights into the critical factors that are shaping the future of the global economy.
Parag Gupta representing the Schwab Foundation took us into the passionate purposes of social entrepreneurs, Hamid Peseschkian offered an insightful and entertaining keynote on the task of finding life balance followed by a panel of individual experiences on how deeper meaning offered the key to finding this like balance.
More panels with members of all ages, sectors and a balance of genders deepened two key questions: the Role of Business in Meeting our Major Global Challenges and the Search of the Real Purpose of Business.
Workshops on the art of consultation in the office, on creating energy efficient buildings that create instead of using energy, on the meaning of a sustainable career, on social entrepreneurship, on the application of spiritual priniciples to redefine success were just a few of the alternatives that participants could chose from.
Part of the program offered a glimpse of the variety of the values-based projects that EBBF members are taking forward in their respective countries and often going beyond national boundaries.
This was the 17th Annual Conference of a network that started back in 1990, when a group of Bahá'ís active in business and management met in Chamonix, France, to discuss their concern about the decline of ethics and values in business. They decided to create the European Bahá'í Business Forum in order to promote the moral and spiritual wisdom and principles of the great religious traditions of the world. These include adherence to the principles of justice, respect, trustworthiness, integrity and unity.
The participants of this year’s sold out event bid their farewells promising to meet again at the next EBBF event or at next year’s Annual Conference 27 – 30th of September 2007.
